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[CHAPTER 21]
[Page 1]
NEGRO PERIDIOCALS, LITERATURE, AND ART IN LOUISIANA
Much of the oral literature of the slaves has been gathered and recorded by prominent white writers of Louisiana, whose names have already been given in other chapters of this study. The written literature of Louisiana Negroes prior to the Civil War was confined exclusively to persons belonging to the free colored class.
The growing wealth of the free colored class during the early years of the American Domination, combined with their subsequent culture, won for them a position so superior to that of the slave that they fitted naturally into the aristocratic traditions and French culture of Louisiana. The white and free colored groups, who were connected to each other by ties of wealth, culture, and blood relationship, grew farther apart as the latter grew more cultured and educated, and the former more powerful and domineering. Moreover, under colonial régimes--despite the many proscriptive mentions of them in the edicts and laws of the period--the lot of the free people of color as citizens was not as sharply differentiated as under the American Domination where the whites were allowed to vote and the free people of color forbidden to do likewise. Whenever the opportunity presented itself they voiced their bitterness because the privileges of citizenship were denied them. One of the earliest examples of this type of free colored protest is a poem attributed to Hippolyte Castra, a free colored soldier who served in the Battle of New Orleans.
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